Electromania
by Toasterman
Summary: Steve Rogers has spent a lot of Independence Days in a lot of places, but in 1944 he spent it stuck in a dungeon in Western Germany, trying to save a forgotten hero from dying in the hands of Hydra. Featuring Bucky Barnes and Electro, the toughest android you've never heard of. One-shot.


**_Electromania  
_**

**_July 3, 1944 _**

**_0200 Hours_**

Pain like a stab wound spears through my brain. Just blinking hurts and the harsh light beaming down above me sears my retinas. I sit up on cold stone floor and feel the first of a hundred aches and sores across my legs and arms. My chest is on fire and I can barely breathe. It is a terrible way to wake up but damn lucky considering that when I blacked out I was riding a burning B-25 into the side of a mountain.

I take stock. They've got me in a prison cell. The bars are iron, half a foot apart horizontally and cross-hatched at intervals of two vertical feet. I'm secured in by a combination lock with a backup keyhole, just in case one of these goons forgets the three digits. I wriggle my toes—they didn't find the lock pick in my boot. Good. One upside.

They also didn't take the uniform, though they took just about everything else. My holster and equipment belt are both gone, which is irritating. Of course the shield is gone. No one is stupid enough to leave me with my weapon, though people that take it from me are usually too stupid to realize that I don't need it.

There's an empty cell across from mine, and I don't hear any movement or signs of life. As far as I can tell, I'm all alone.

I wish I knew where the kid is.

Focus, Rogers. He was in the bomb compartment when the plane got hit. You lost control and told him to jump.

"No way, Cap!"

You turned in the seat, the controls bucking in your grip. The starboard engine was out and belching flame. The port engine was gone.

"Strap one on and jump, Buck! Now!"

"Fuck that!"

"Bucky, language!"

The starboard engine gave out completely and detonated, taking most of the wing with it. The bird listed beyond your control to stop it and entered an uncontrollable spin.

With no way to stop it, you got up and climbed aft, pulling yourself along despite the sudden vertigo. You grabbed the kid and strapped the chute on him.

"No!" he shouted. Then he threw a punch. It was a solid hit, connecting with your chin.

But it didn't stop you from knocking the door open and hurling him out into the darkness, leaving you to ride solo into the mountainside.

Now that I'm sitting here in a prison cell in God-knows-where, I realize it would have been better to keep a second parachute on board. Can still feel the pain in my jaw. I hope the kid's alright.

((()))

I get to my feet after a minute spent catching my breath. A walk around the cell reveals that the direct route through the barred door isn't the best route to freedom. The right hand wall is weak, its stones old and the mortar between them crumbling away with time. Judging by the inconsistency in their size and the angle of cut, I'd put the wall's construction date at some point in the 1200's.

The hallway outside reaffirms this. Cobblestone construction and an arched ceiling, with torch sconces positioned every fifteen feet for lighting. The sconces are empty in favor of can lights mounted along the ceiling—a quick retrofit of an ancient dungeon. Cables run along the floor.

I hear a door open and footsteps on limestone. Then come the voices in German.

"—so I look him dead in the eye and tell him, 'I don't care if she's my cousin, it's worth it!'"

The speaker laughs obscenely. Another voice responds.

"Why do I even talk to you?"

"Come on, that's funny!"

"No, that's sick. And to think we're related."

The first German stops at my cell door and starts fumbling with the combination lock. His friend is too busy lighting a cigarette to pay attention.

"Admit it. You would have done the same."

"No, I wouldn't."

"Why not?"

"For the same reason that you went ahead! She is our cousin!"

"Oh, you're such a traditionalist."

One of them finally takes note.

"Franz, do you remember there being a huge hole in that wall?" He pauses. "Where is the American?"

And that's when I drop from the ceiling and kick Franz in the teeth. He drops like a sack of rocks, the noise startling his brother, who whips around, grabbing at his holstered luger. He'll have the pistol free and firing in one point four seconds, barring any unintentional fumbling. My fist connects with his nose in point two, his head with the floor point one after that.

I stand back, look up and down the hallway. One entrance and exit, the door they came in from. No one in any of the other cells.

Their gear is Nazi standard, but painted a vibrant green with brown accents. I recognize the patch they wear opposite the swatstika—a six-tailed skull wreathed by a red circle. It's a symbol I've seen all too often in recent months, as the Nazi Empire crumbles under our advance and celled factions like this one spring up in its place.

Hydra. This castle—because where else does anyone in this country build a lair?—must be one the base I was looking for.

Which is fortunate. I had counted on a week of scouting to find it. Still not sure if this much pain was worth saving a week of espionage.

I take the man's luger and his brother's MP40. The door at the end of the hall leads to a small anteroom where a third guard is napping at a desk. He's fat and drooling, no kind of threat. I slip past him and make my way deeper into the castle. Somewhere in this mess of old stones and cobwebs is a hero in need of rescue.

((()))

He doesn't know why it hurts so much but it hurts and he screams and no one can hear him. He only knows hurtconcept through the truefather. The truefather explained hurtconcept to him as best he could to a mind that had never known the feeling, and so he only understood hurtconcept as a negative correlation. Humans were hurt. Humans felt pain. He did not.

But now he can. Now he cannot move and the antifathers are hurting him. It hurts and it shouldn't hurt. He cannot feel the truefather, the one who created him and kept him calm and made him work. He cannot feel a proxyfather, those that help him when the truefather is away. He is alone in his mind and it hurts from everywhere at once. Unable to transmit thought-to-thought he began to blurt audibly.

"**Why not they stop why not they stop why not they stop why not they stop—"**

One of the antifathers speaks. His hand is a claw and only one eye is true, the other a bright glass.

"Can you not silence this blabbering monstrosity?" he says.

The other, a female all in green—green hair green clothes green boots green gloves—steps forward. She has a knife in her hand.

"With pleasure."

((()))

I want to help him but I can't. Strucker and Madame Hydra are tough one-on-one. Fighting both at once would be an uphill fight on my best day, so fighting them both while half my nerves are on fire would be suicide. So I sit in the eaves of the dining hall turned torture lab and watch as Madame Hydra stabs Electro in the throat. Sparks fly and his vocalator shorts out in a spasming string of syllables.

"—**WHY NOT THEY STOOOEOEEEOOO FITZZZ"**

"Thank you," says Strucker. He looks to the small man operating on the robot's open chest cavity. "Doctor, any progress? Can you recalibrate this creature's reaction center for Hydra control, or are we stuck with a pedantic machine that whines as you cut it?"

That's troubling. Electro is typically controlled by an empathic link to its creator, Professor Zog, or one of his hand-picked lieutenants. When controlled he becomes a wrecking machine, able to hurl tanks for miles and drop buildings with his punches.

But Electro does have a mind of his own. That default intelligence is there to maintain the simple functions of the robot's body, like power conservation and balance. When uncontrolled that intelligence comes to the fore, exhibiting a mind little more advanced than that of a child, prone to confusion and tantrums.

It is that mind that Strucker's scientist is now torturing with his experiments. An innocent mind. A child's mind. I feel the very sudden urge to break his neck.

"I've no idea, Herr Strucker. Zog's abilities are far beyond my own. This will take time."

Strucker sighs. "Time is something the Reich, and Hydra, does not have an abundance of. Finish your work here, Doctor, or Viper here will finish it for you."

Madame Hydra says nothing, but the look she gives the small doctor communicates the threat well enough. The little man shirks from her like a mouse from a cat. I get the distinct impression that Strucker has forced one innocent to torture another.

"Yes, Herr Strucker."

The two higher-ups leave the chamber, the door banging closed behind them. I wait three minutes, watching the scientist work, before leaping down into the chamber. Innocent or not, I can't have Strucker's scientist setting off any alarms. I chop him in the throat and ease him to the ground, unconscious.

Electro thrashes, his limbs grabbing at chains strong enough to moor a battleship. I want to calm him down but I don't know how. I decide to start with stopping whatever it is that's causing him this much agony.

I look at the banks of instrumentation surrounding the lashed machine. Four hundred dials, six hundred lit buttons, a thousand feet of memory tape and not one idea on how to shut it all down.

I back up, look at the closed door. It's heavy oak, but not nearly soundproof. I weigh the pros and cons for a second, shake my head, and unload most of Franz's MP40 into the computer bank.

Sparks and shredded steel go flying, but the bank powers down. Electro stops thrashing. I jump to his chest and start pulling out the wires that have been causing him pain, then pull the latch that secures the chains to his body.

"Come on, pal. Get up."

He does. He gets up immediately, grabs me with his pincer hand, and hurls me across the chamber. I hit the floor on my back and slide to a stop, rolling over just in time to see Electro's foot coming down for my face.

I reach up, palms open, and catch enough force to overturn a locomotive on my forearms. My muscles lock up, my bones creak, and every fiber in my body spasms, but I haven't been crushed. I'd be amazed at my own strength if I wasn't seconds from death.

"Electro! Stop!"

"**BRANG!" **His shattered throat tries to respond with a sound like an electronic spring bouncing off water. **"BRANG BRANG!"**

An alarm goes off somewhere in the castle. Electro hears it and turns to look. The pressure on my forearms eases. Not much, but enough.

I push up and roll to the side, out from under his foot before it comes down with a massive crunch of pulverizing stone. He turns, realizing what has happened, and prepares to hit me. I see his arm draw back, see the golden coils of his bicep building for the punch. The attack will collide with me in point six seconds.

I can't dodge in time. I can't block it again. When he hits, the impact will mash my torso into soup.

I close my eyes.

There is a lout spang of metal-on-metal and I open my eyes just in time to see my shield bouncing off Electro's head and coming for my nose. I reach up and catch it out of reflex, then roll aside to dodge a dazed punch from the giant android.

"Cap!" I hear him before I see him. "Up here!"

I see the kid in the rafters, Thompson held in a two handed grip.

"Bucky?"

He waves. "Found that shield in one of these rooms! Sorry it took so long!"

"**BRANG!"**

I spin and lift the shield, taking another hit full-on. This time it's Electro who feels pain. Part of his hand crumples on impact. He stumbles back, braying.

Bucky drops down beside me. "Is that what we're here to get?"

"Yeah," I tell him.

"Wow," he says. "What's wrong with it?"

"He's been tortured."

"Damn." The kid looks at me. "Hey, Cap. Sorry about earlier."

I grin despite the pain. "No worries, Buck. Let's focus on now."

There is shouting outside the door, and bootfalls on stone are getting closer by the second.

"Bar the door," I tell him. "Keep them out for a minute while I psych up our friend here."

"How the hell do you psych up a robot, Steve?"

"Door."

"Yeah, yeah."

((()))

I step up to Electro, shield held low but still close enough to defend should it become necessary. I lift my free hand up, palm out, fingers open. Hopefully he gets that I'm not here for a fight.

"Electro, can you hear me?"

His head whips around, his one golden eye locking on to me.

"**BRANG BRANG BRANG."**

"I'm Captain America, and that's my partner, Bucky. We were sent here to break you out. We're friends of Professor Zog."

The robot's head straightens. That perked his interest. I build on it.

"Zog is our friend. He wants you to work with us. Then we can get you repaired so you can talk with him again."

"**BRANG BRANG BRANG BRANG."**

"Alright, okay. Hang on." I keep eye contact with him. "Your voice is broken, pal. Just make that noise once for yes, and twice for no. Do you get me?"

"**BRANG."**

I pause for a moment, wondering if that got through at all.

"Does one brang mean yes?" I ask.

"**BRANG."**

Huh. "Brang once if one brang means yes."

Now Electro pauses. He looks at me for a long moment, in which I can hear his internal gears clicking and turning. His powerplant roars like a Sherman's engine.

"**BRANG,"** he says at last.

It'll have to do. I turn to Bucky. "How's that door coming?"

"About to give way, I think." He backs up to join me at Electro's side, his Thompson held ready. He offers me a .45. I take it and drop the luger.

"Who all is here?" he asks. "Anybody I know?"

"Strucker and Viper," I tell him.

"I thought we killed Strucker."

"Intel says that was a fake."

"Swell. Intel never knows anything."

"You're not wrong."

The door breaks in the middle, and Strucker's red claw bursts through. Tendrils of heat waft from it as he saws the door in half and punches it in. There is a brief instant of calm where Strucker and a platoon of Hydra troops stand across from the three of us, each side taking aim but no one firing.

Then Strucker shouts, "Kill the Americans!" and the calm is shattered by a fusillade of withering gunfire.

((()))

He plods ahead of his savior, taking a hundred score bullets upon his chest but he doesn't care. He can't feel them. The hurtconcept is gone with the machines that the savior destroyed and now he is free to kill the ones who hurt him.

The little squishy ones go first, crumpling under his feet. They aren't strong enough to stop him. Not like the savior. They are weak and he crushes them. One of them shoots a rocket into his face. The explosion roils out and scorches his paint but does little else. He smacks the little man with a full-force punch. The blood doesn't show on his red fist.

"Electro!" He hears the savior calling his name, sees him fighting through a squad on his own. "Get Strucker!"

Strucker. Claw man. The antifather. He searches the room and locks on to the figure of the one-eyed torturer, fleeing up into the second story walkways.

"**BRANG!"**

((()))

Electro hits Strucker like a freight train and busts through a wall and out of sight, not that I would have time to watch them even if they were visible. Hydra is flooding the chamber with bodies faster than I can shoot. I empty the .45 in a few seconds, dropping six thugs, before they're onto me with knives and pistols.

The knives I can dodge or disarm, and the bullets I can handle with my shield. I keep my head on a swivel and block shots as they come at me from above, from the sides, and from dead on. I sweep the legs out from under one trooper and catch the man behind him in the neck, snapping vertebrae and dropping him. A gleam in my periphery signals a knife behind me and I spin, breaking the blade at the hilt with the shield and kicking its wielder in the chest. Ribs snap. Lungs puncture. He drops.

Madame Hydra comes at me from the crowd. She has a rapier in each hand and knows how to use them, stabbing in fencing thrusts. I twist aside and knock one rapier away with my shield, the other with the flat of my hand. It cuts the back of my wrist. Hot blood rushes inside my glove. It hurts but isn't the fatal cut it would have been had it struck the underside—the strike she was going for.

I work the angle, get inside her guard and give her three to the stomach, one to the head. She staggers, ripostes, opens another wound in my pectoral. More blood. She backs away, disappearing into the sea of green bodies and I'm on the defensive again, making counter-kills against a dozen or more Hydra agents.

"Buck, get Viper!" I shout, having no idea where the kid is but knowing it's not important. He'll take care of her.

Or not.

She comes at me again, less than a minute since her first assault. The rapier is gone—she doesn't rely on it. Instead we go toe-to-toe, fist-to-fist. Viper is no super soldier. I ought to have her outclassed on every front, but I'm bloodied and she isn't. The field is closer to even than it's ever been.

She punches, I block. I kick, she dodges. I can't beat her like this. Gotta change the rules.

I leap back to put some distance between us and sling away, sending the shield flying for her neck. She ducks it, the natural instinct, and lowers her head right into my rising boot. Her nose and half her jaw breaks and she flops to the ground. I'm not sure if she's dead or unconscious. The shield flies back into my hand and I shoulder it, ready for more.

But more doesn't come.

The remaining Hydra troopers are standing still, their weapons held nervously at the ready. With Viper down, they don't know whether to fight, flee, or lay down and die like more than half their number already have.

Bucky walks up beside me, his gun trained casually on the soldiers. "What now, Cap?"

I clear my throat and speak in German. "Weapons down!"

Two dozen rifles hit the floor.

"Your Reich is falling, and the leaders you follow in their place fall with them." I gesture at the woman on the floor. "You are being given a chance to live through this. Go home to your mothers and fathers, and thank Almighty God that you've lived through this war. Use this fresh start for good."

None of them move. Some look at their comrades, unsure if what they've heard is true. I don't fit their propaganda image of evil American invaders. They are stunned.

Bucky breaks them of it, shouldering his Thompson and aiming at the first row.

"Leave," he says. "Now."

((()))

We follow Electro's path of collapsed walls and burning debris until we find the robot outside the castle, standing in the exploded remains of what was once a guard house. Strucker lays at his feet, beaten but remarkably breathing. Bucky drops the unconscious Viper next to him and kneels to bind their hands.

I look at Electro. "Didn't kill him?"

"**BRANG BRANG."**

"Good call." I look at Strucker. "See, Baron? You can torture it all you want, but at the end of the day this android still has more humanity than you'll ever know."

"Damn you," Strucker hisses.

"Aw, I love you, too," says Bucky, before whacking him in the temple with the butt of his rifle. "Now shut the hell up and get hogtied."

"Language, Buck."

I look back at the castle, weeping smoke from the holes in its centuries' old body like blood from wounds, and watch as the sun peaks over its battlements. A pink summer sunrise in Western Germany.

The kid stands up and wipes his hands on his pants. "Hell of a way to start the Fourth of July, huh, Cap?"

"That it is, Bucky. That it is."

**Author's Note: My third annual 4th of July Cap Story. Hope you enjoyed it.**


End file.
